Backlash

NEW YORK -- As secrets go, this was less confidential than a wiretapped phone call.Megaphone, anyone?The New York Knicks yesterday made their Pat Riley intentions official by formally offering their head coaching position to the former Los Angeles Lakers coach. Knicks president Dave Checketts said Riley, who won four NBA titles in the 1980s, would be given a "reasonable amount of time" to decide if he wants to accept the long-term offer."Pat Riley is the choice," Checketts said. "We are going to offer him the job. There is no time frame, but we are going to give him a reasonable amount of time to make his decision."

BOSTON -- Too bad they don't have an Oscar for the Single Best Line in a movie. A Zeitgeist award for the sentence you want to freeze-frame, the magical moment when Hollywood fantasy meets daily life, when they get it absolutely right.Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson picked up a couple of statues last week for Best Actress and Best Actor in "As Good as It Gets." But the Best Line prize belongs to the scribbler who put a string of ungenteel words in Ms. Hunt's mouth. When the distraught mother gave her opinion about the managed medical attention being given her asthmatic son, she exploded: "F HMO B Pieces of S-!"

SEATTLE - It's flashback time in the land of Jimi Hendrix on the opening of what is believed to be the first serious exhibit of a musical and social phenomenon that, for better or worse, largely defined the '70s. Disco: A Decade of Saturday Nights runs through May 26 at Experience Music Project, a jury-rigged rock 'n' roll museum in the thin shadow of the Space Needle. The exhibit seeks to lend disco the dignity it failed to attain during its heyday. "Disco at its inception was an underground phenomenon, and it became more mainstream than any pop style before or since," said San Francisco music critic Barry Walter, an adviser to the exhibit.

When he saw the name of the Army officer accused in Thursday's shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Imam Awni Qudah got that sick feeling again. "I feel nervous when I see a Muslim name or an Arab name," Qudah, the spiritual leader of the Islamic Society of Annapolis, said Friday at the Makkah Learning Center in Gambrills. "What worries me is our neighbors, our reputation," he said. "Whenever something happens, everybody looks at us, and we do not want that barrier." Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old Army psychiatrist at the Army base in Texas, is accused of launching the attack Thursday that left 13 dead and 38 wounded.

JENKINTOWN, Pa. -- Rep. Jon D. Fox is leading Bob Dole through a crowd of applauding admirers at the Ukrainian Educational and Cultural Center here when an excited teen-ager cries out that she just has to have her picture taken with the 1996 Republican presidential nominee. Sure, Fox says. He seizes the camera, poses the girl with Dole and shoots the picture and a second one to be sure.Is this what it takes to be a full-service congressman?"This is my essence," Fox says. "I'm a work horse, not a show horse."

The Nixon backlash is beginning to rage. When the former president died April 22, much of the media assessed his career with a nostalgic forgiveness -- and forgetfulness? -- that has raised the cry of revisionism. Trickie Dick as a great statesman? As antidote, the May 16 New Republic includes a collection of Nixon-hating quotes from past issues, ranging from a 1952 description of him as a "kept man" and a "phony" to a 1972 look at his "mean and cruel streak." The accompanying article, by Jonathan Rauch, judges Nixon's career "without considering Watergate," and still comes up with little of value: "We have spent the last two decades struggling to undo his errors, and may spend another two the same way."

The Linowes commission has said the legislature should approve more money for the state's poorest school districts. So has State School Superintendent Joseph Shilling, as have educators from Baltimore, Carroll and Harford counties. Even the wealthier counties recognize the need. Governor Schaefer has also expressed support for the idea.Now a statewide education reform group, the Metropolitan Education Commission, has chimed in with a similar proposal, calling for spending an additional $628 million a year on education.

Robert A. Beck,71, former chairman and chief executive of Prudential Insurance Co. of America, died Sunday in Vero Beach, Fla., of cancer of the esophagus. Mr. Beck became the company's 12th president in 1974. He was elected chairman and chief executive officer in 1978, holding those positions until his retirement in 1987. He was named chairman emeritus and served on the Prudential board until 1995.The Rev. Billy Joe Clegg,69, who ran for president for more than two decades, died Thursday in Biloxi, Miss.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- At a hotel in Orlando this week, executives in the cable television industry have nearly been salivating over these three initials: PPV.That's an abbreviation for pay-per-view, a technology whose time has come, especially for sports, cable experts say.The cable honchos, in Orlando for an industry convention, maintain they have reason to be wringing their hands in anticipation of uncovering a golden goose. They feel they will be able to take in millions of dollars from charging viewers for events that in many cases previously were shown on free TV.Only time will tell, because PPV technology still is too new to judge.

The Russian ambassador chastised the United States last night for inattention to Russia's problems, saying that economic chaos in the struggling superpower could bring an anti-Western, nationalist dictatorship to power."